


Hold With Those Who Favor Fire

by Pippin



Category: The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Angst, Gen, Kidnapping, fire spirit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-17
Updated: 2020-06-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:20:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24764518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pippin/pseuds/Pippin
Summary: She is born in the heart of a forest fire, the heat and flame calling forth a new life to live within in.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 46





	Hold With Those Who Favor Fire

She is born in the heart of a forest fire, the heat and flame calling forth a new life to live within in. For a while she dances there, days turning to weeks turning to months, the giant raging fire of a never-dying flame. The fire burns and burns, kept alive by her presence, safe to that life which dared enter her domain, for fire spirits are benevolent until given cause to not be.

She is familiar with the denizens of the forest, the plants and animals who cautiously began their lives anew in the once-scorched earth she cultivates. They recognize protection in her flames, fertile ground for growing and living and the unending tender care of one who is a caretaker at the core of her very being.

It is one rainy day that everything goes wrong. Rain is not a threat to a fire spirit, the magic innate in their being more powerful than the water that seeks to destroy them, and, besides, she likes the rain, the gentle kiss of a lover she cannot ever hope to have beyond these fleeting meetings as the steam rises from her fiery skin where they touch. 

It is raining, and travelers see her flame. They stop beside it, reaching out shaking hands to the warmth. She is used to this, used to protecting those lost in the forest or those passing through. She spins herself up a form more recognizable, a mimicry of the first human she ever saw, a young lady left in the woods to die by a former lover. There are no features, for she neither remembers the face nor has any will to create one, but the form is human enough.

Normally travelers are taken aback by her sudden appearance, though that is never her intention. These travelers, however, have their brief moment of silent shock before exchanging a glance, one that she does not like the look and feeling of. She goes to retreat, desperate, but is not fast enough as they swing a lantern through her form, through her heart.

The woods go dark.

She is trapped, beating uselessly against the glass walls of her new prison, unsure what kind of humans would dare to capture a spirit whom they could never hope to control. The lantern is spelled, however, sigils engraved into the metal between the glass paneling, and they bind her to this lantern, keep her from breaking herself free and returning to her woods.

She is unsure how long passes while she is trapped in the lantern, for spirits do not mark time in the manner of humans. All she knows is that they are taking her away from the home she loves, from the forest she protects, from her freedom. They travel for some time, through lands she has never before seen, before arriving at a massive building of stone. 

The building sets her metaphorical teeth on edge. She cannot put words as to _why_ , but it feels wrong.

Her nervous feeling is confirmed as the man holding her lantern enters a room bustling with people all dressed in finery, a cruel grin on his face. In all the cyclical passing of seasons she has lived, she has never seen an expression like that, and a chill runs through her.

That, more than anything, is what makes her redouble her frantic efforts to escape. There is an innate talent of the elemental spirits to be aware of danger to their own being, and there is no reason other than that very danger for a fire spirit to experience chills of the nature she is now experiencing.

The man holding the lantern and his partner are talking, and some part of her knows she should listen, but far more pressing is her need to escape. So she ignores the words, focusing for searching her prison for weaknesses and faults and any hope.

There is none.

She is so focused that it takes her a moment to notice that the lantern is being set down. But it is down, and the man who caught her is _opening the door_. She flares up immediately, fiercely, catching his hand faster than he can withdraw it. He roars and she goes for his face, but before she can reach it she slams into a wall, one she cannot see. 

What she can see, however, are the sigils carved into the stones lining her new prison. The man laughs, even as he cradles his badly burnt hand.

“There’s no way out.”

* * *

Time proves this true. She is a slave of the castle, if even that, for all she is called upon for is what she can do and not what she is. She has access to every fire of the castle, and so often she must travel between them at a moment’s notice. Every moment she longs for the freedom of her woods.

No one interacts with her and she does not interact with anyone, not for a very long time. She cannot mark the passing of seasons, entrapped as she is with no line to the outside world, but she has a vague idea of the growth and death of animals, and she watches many humans be born and grow old and die as she continues her enslavement.

She finally interacts with someone when the young daughter of one of the council members reaches into the fire while her nursemaid’s back is turned. She has no care for humans at the best of times, not anymore, but she does not want to listen to the screams of the child, and so she does not let her burn. The girl is fascinated by the feeling of gentle heat and tingling warmth on her skin and remains with her hand in the heart of the flames until her nursemaid catches her and scolds her loudly.

The little girl returns, though, and she cannot burn the child now, so the same warmth is what she gives the girl.

Time passes, as it is wont to do, and the girl grows, in the trend of humans. She is a young lady now, no longer a child, and she talks softly to the spirit in the fire. There is no reply, though, until the day she sits on her bed sobbing.

“Are you okay?” Her voice is crackly, words spun from the sounds of fire, and the girl picks her head up quickly, tears forgotten in her shock.

“You can _talk_.”

“I can,” comes the answer and confirmation.

At this, the girl comes to kneel in front of the fireplace. “All these years and I never introduced myself. I never thought of you as…human.”

 _You and everyone else,_ she thinks but does not say.

“My name is Briar.” She holds her hand out awkwardly for a moment, then laughs at herself. “What am I doing; you don’t have hands. Do you have a name?”

“No.” She had never had use for one before, as spirits did not name themselves nor often interact with others who would need to call them something specific, and the inhabitants of the castle had had neither cause nor need—nor, to be fair, desire—to give her a name themselves.

Briar walks away for a moment, returning with a heavy leather-bound book. She flips through it until she finds a particular page.

“Do you remember when you used to change colors for me when I couldn’t sleep.”

“Of course.” Her memory is long.

Briar holds up the book, the illustration on the page of dancing colors that resembled licks of flame. “It’s an aurora. Can I call you Aurora?”

She considers. “Yes.”

* * *

Time continues to pass, and Briar leaves, her hand in marriage given to a second son of a lesser lord of the neighboring kingdom. Aurora does not mourn her loss; she’s seen so many pass through the halls of the castle to which she is bound. One more is hardly a tragedy, no matter how kindly she had treated Aurora. 

And so generations live and generations die, and Aurora never sees anything beyond the limited view of her hearths. 

The most interesting thing comes when the king’s nephew arrives. Even as limited as she is, Aurora can feel the magic rolling off him in choking swarms. She gathers, over time, that he attracts curses, the source of the pungent power she can sense. Most of the curses, however, seem limited to the boy himself, until one day, they aren’t.

Aurora doesn’t know what happened, only that she is bitterly keeping the kitchen fire at a high temperature without burning the young girl assigned to attend the roasting spits when there is a surge of power that nearly extinguishes her. When she is able to see again, everyone in the room has gone. She has to assume it is related to the power she felt, that the young prince finally attracted a curse that affected the rest of them.

Everything goes off at the edges as she dies down, down, barely even embers, unable to resist even as her own innate magic tries to fight off the attacking power. And then,

she sleeps.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Fire and Ice by Robert Frost.
> 
> This is not the end of Aurora's story. There may be no happy ending to be found here, but sleep is not an eternity and she will waken eventually.


End file.
